Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
Source identified
All useful and beautiful thoughts, in like manner, are the issue of labour, of study, of observation, of research, of diligent elaboration.
Read & copy the quotation
“All useful and beautiful thoughts, in like manner, are the issue of labour, of study, of observation, of research, of diligent elaboration.”

Samuel Smiles

Download image (JPG)

Source
Thrift
Date
1875
Meaning

Meaning of “All useful and beautiful thoughts, in like manner,…”

Smiles describes developed ideas as products of study, observation, research and revision, making intellectual creativity a process of deliberate elaboration.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles applies the chapter’s labour argument to intellectual and creative production, listing study, observation, research and diligent elaboration as the work behind useful and beautiful thought.

Primary / edition source ↗

Customize your imageTen designs · Square or portrait · Preview and share
Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

ArtBeautifulBookCreativityCuriosityEffortHard WorkLearning Quotes About Curiosity, Study & ExperienceMotivational Quotes for Action, Effort & PersistenceReadingSuccessThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentUnderstandingMotivation For Work
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.
Read & copy

“If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.”

Epictetus · Discourses of Epictetus · c. 125
Meaning & context

Skill grows through repeated practice rather than through wanting the identity without doing the activity.

Source details

Discourses of Epictetus, Book II, Chapter XVIII, “How we should struggle against appearances,” George Long translation; 1877 George Bell & Sons witness on Wikisource, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #10661. Epictetus explains that habits and faculties are maintained by corresponding actions: “If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.”

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
it is only after years of practice that they will be able to illuminate noble words rightly for the eyes
Read & copy

“it is only after years of practice that they will be able to illuminate noble words rightly for the eyes”

John Ruskin · Lectures on Art, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870 · 1870
Meaning & context

The ability to turn words into accomplished visual form is represented as a long-practiced craft rather than an effect that appears from inspiration alone.

Source details

Lectures on Art, Lecture VI, Project Gutenberg #19164. The passage discusses disciplined line, colour and illumination practice.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
All that is great in man comes of labour;—greatness in art, in literature, in science.
Read & copy

“All that is great in man comes of labour;—greatness in art, in literature, in science.”

Samuel Smiles · Thrift · 1875
Meaning & context

Smiles presents major artistic, literary and scientific achievement as inseparable from labour, reflecting the book’s strong Victorian ethic of industry.

Source details

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles broadens his defence of labour from material production to art, literature, science and knowledge; the universal wording is his historical moral claim, not an empirical rule that effort alone guarantees greatness.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
No man can read the evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know what the work cost
Read & copy

“No man can read the evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know what the work cost”

John Ruskin · Lectures on Art, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870 · 1870
Meaning & context

Experience of sustained effort can deepen appreciation of the labour embedded in another person’s work because the observer has some basis for understanding its cost.

Source details

Lectures on Art, Lecture III, Project Gutenberg #19164. Ruskin is discussing how practice changes the viewer’s ability to recognize workmanship in art.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
The noblest poem cannot be elaborated, and send down its undying strains into the future, without steady and painstaking labour.
Read & copy

“The noblest poem cannot be elaborated, and send down its undying strains into the future, without steady and painstaking labour.”

Samuel Smiles · Thrift · 1875
Meaning & context

Poetic achievement is used as an example of creative work requiring patient elaboration rather than appearing complete in a single burst.

Source details

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The sentence follows Smiles’s claim that useful and beautiful thoughts arise from sustained intellectual work and uses poetry as one example of painstaking creative labour.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.
Read & copy

“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar · 1837
Meaning & context

Reading can be an active intellectual act when the reader interprets, connects, questions, and produces new understanding rather than merely receiving words passively.

Source details

The American Scholar; Emerson argues that books should awaken independent thought rather than replace it.

↓ Download image (JPG)